it's not my job.

today, i went to another berekely lecture, on the invitation of a friend. it was called "a social autopsy of the katrina crisis", which sounded fascinating. the place was mobbed, and i, of course, got there late. so the room was packed, and they had some chairs and a tv set up in the hallway for the overflow crowd. but the microphone hookup wasn't working well, so the sound was very quiet, and we could barely hear what the panelists were saying.

well, we sat there for about 20 minutes (i counted), while 20 of us sitting in the hallway were unable to hear a thing. they looked angrily at someone with a candy wrapper, making excess noise that detracted from the barely audible lecture on the tv (recorded from the room about 10 feet away). finally, i was so annoyed, that i got up, squeezed into the lecture room, and interrupted the speaker - "um, excuse me, could you please speak up? we're having difficulty hearing you out here." people kind of shuffled around, the speaker stood up to talk, and they continued. i took my seat outside again, and everyone kind of sheepishly whispered "thank you" to me as i sat down. but the sound didn't improve.

so, rather than anyone else interrupting again, people started coming up to me "could they turn the microphone on?" "maybe they should change the wires." and i looked at them and said "i don't know, why don't you ask them?"

it was so weird. a room and a half full of intelligent, outspoken academics, and no one can speak up and say "excuse me, we can't hear anything!" or "why don't we all take 5 minutes to shift around so the people outside can get inside and we can all continue?"

instead, everyone - inside the room and out - was thinking "well, it's not really my job to fix the sound. someone should be on top of that."

i went into the staff room and asked one of the staff members if there was a "media services" dept we could call. apparently not. the tv belongs to the dept and one professor (who was off teaching a class) is the only one who deals with it.

i couldn't believe it. shouldn't sociologists be aware of this kind of social stigma? or is it too "action-oriented" to be on their radar screens? one snarky grad student actually said to me "well, welcome to bureaucracy." welcome to bureaucracy?! that's a little fatalistic, isn't it? how disappointing.

in a slightly related story, i saw an older man, possibly drunk, fall down in the middle of the street today, and no one got out of their cars to help him (including me - though i was on the other side of the street, 4 lanes of traffic). how unfortunate. isn't it someone's job to help people like that?